Physical-Layer CTC From LoRa to Wi-Fi With IEEE 802.11ax

Wi-Fi is the de facto standard for providing wireless access to the Internet using the 2.4GHz ISM (Industrial Scientific Medical) band. LoRa (Long Range) is specially designed for Low-Power, Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) and has a broad range of applications in Internet of Things. Tens of billions of mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) are manufactured with limited types of wireless radio, making it challenging to access the data in the heterogeneous IoT devices. To address this challenge, we propose a method that enables LoRa devices to establish connections and engage in communication with Wi-Fi networks. A key observation of this study is that when a LoRa frame collides with an ongoing Wi-Fi transmission, the Wi-Fi receiver captures and retains the LoRa data. By analyzing the decoded Wi-Fi payload, we can retrieve the LoRa data, and this method remains fully compatible with existing commodity Wi-Fi hardware. Moreover, evaluations with Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) and commodity devices demonstrate reliable wireless communication from LoRa to Wi-Fi networks with a high reliability in frame reception and low frame error rates across various indoor and outdoor environments.